CalPERS set up funds mandated to invest in California companies to help California job creation. How's that working out for them?

CalPERS' investment committee urged staff not to move ahead with plans to end the pension fund's $1.035 billion private equity program that targets California-based companies.

Staff at the $237.5 billion California Public Employees' Retirement System, Sacramento, has called for a five-year wind-down of the program and did not back off that recommendation on Monday, although a panel of investment staff members led by Real Desrochers, senior portfolio officer, private equity, said they would work to develop a new plan for in-state investments.

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The most recent commitment in the program, $560 million to a Hamilton Lane fund of funds in 2006, has shown an internal rate of return of 0.86% as of Dec. 31 compared to its benchmark's 6.9% return.

Another $475 million committed to 10 managers in 2001 has shown an annualized -6.4% IRR as of Dec. 31 when the performance of one of the funds — the GCP California Fund, with a 94% IRR — was excluded, according to an analysis of the California-only private equity program presented to the board.

And let's not forget CalPERS' most hilarious California investment of all: putting a billion dollars into leveraged scrub land outside of Los Angeles at the peak of the housing bubble in the infamous LandSource deal.

Here's a tip for you geniuses at CalPERS: don't invest in a failed state that just decided to borrow money to build a $6 billion train to nowhere when it can't even balance the annual budget much less keep up with mushrooming pension liabilities.

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PROOF THAT COLORADO’S GOVERNMENT LIES: COLORADO PERA’S ATTEMPT TO TAKE CONTRACTED RETIREE BENEFITS.

You may know that an entity of Colorado state government, Colorado PERA, is attempting to breach its public pension contracts with its retirees. Colorado PERA is attempting a retroactive taking, a “clawback” of accrued, fully-vested pension benefits that were earned by retired PERA members over decades.Colorado PERA public pension benefits include a “base benefit” that is set at retirement and a “COLA benefit” that adjusts pensions annually to compensate for inflation. The “base benefit” and the “COLA benefit” are set forth in Colorado statutes with identical force of law and legal status.

In its attempt to breach retiree contracts Colorado PERA has created a contrivance. The contrivance that Colorado PERA is using is that somehow the “base benefit” is a contractual obligation, but the “COLA benefit” is not a contractual obligation, in spite of the fact that both pension benefits are set forth in law in an identical manner. What this boils down to is attempted, unabashed, theft by government.

Whether or not Colorado PERA’s attempt to take fully-vested public pension benefits from PERA retirees is ultimately successful in the courts, one fact has been incontrovertibly established . . . Colorado PERA, as an instrumentality of the State of Colorado, is an organization that will lie to achieve its policy goals.

And now, the proof of the deceit . . .

Colorado PERA has told us, in writing, that the PERA COLA benefit IS a contractual obligation of PERA . . . and then, after initiating their attempt to breach contracts, Colorado PERA has told us, in writing, that the PERA COLA benefit IS NOT a contractual obligation of PERA. Both of these statements cannot be true.

That is simply unbelievable.

In one document PERA writes "the contract right has never existed." In the other they write that the COLA benefit is a contractual obligation protected under the Colorado and US constitutions.

For further information regarding Colorado PERA’s attempt to take fully-vested pension benefits from retirees visit saveperacola.com or Friend Save Pera Cola on Facebook.